“We must believe in free will. We have no choice.”
attributed to Isaac B. Singer, v’ikka d’amri Albert Einstein
Ma’amad Har Sinai is often likened to a marriage, with—of all things—the kfias har ke’gigis, the uprooting of Har Sinai and its hanging over the heads of Bnei Yisrael, serving as the chupa.
(Interesting method of proposal; imagine its employment on the Upper West Side. On the other hand, if a guy claimed to move mountains and could actually back it up...)
How to explain the explain the apparent the discrepancy between a “na’aseh v’nishma” and the obvious coercion involved in the kfias ha-har? The “kabbalas haTorah” Gemara (Shabbos 88a) even notes that R’ Aha bar Yaakov called this a “moda’a gedola d’oraisa”, loosely translated as: the Jews had an escape clause!!! (Of course, they obviated said ostensible escape clause at Purim—“Kimu veKiblu”).
The Medrash (Tanchuma Noach 3) clarifies: The aspect of Torah that had yet to be accepted was that of Torah She'b'al Peh (The Oral Torah).
Why would coercion need to be employed?
Rabbi Lipman Podolsky puts it: The Written Torah is much easier -- what you see is what you get. The Oral Torah on the other hand is a living, breathing, growing Torah. One must conquer it before one can truly fathom its True understanding. Thus, the Jews at Sinai accepted the Oral Torah only out of coercion.
http://www.yna.edu/site/index.php?option=com_kb&task=article&article=2952
Contrast that with this theoretical approach, from a vehemently right-wing educator:
Rabbi Heshy Grossman: It is not obedience that we want, but inspiration. Coercion can be maintained for a limited amount of time, while our youth are still under our thumb, but, more often, it creates a negative association with deeds we are striving to have them adopt. Without care and sensitivity, the hostility we create may last a lifetime.
http://haemtza.blogspot.com/2005_03_01_archive.html
From my experiences with Chareidi/Yeshivish hashkafa, Rabbi Grossman’s approach is, if not counterintuitive, certainly mostly untried in more stringent circles, no matter whether for good reason or not.
I think the tension between the two elements of Kabbalas HaTorah--the "naaseh-nishma" and the k'fias ha-har can be illustrated by what I would call the difference between and “fundamentalist” approach and, for lack of a better term, a, “adult” approach.
A “fundamentalist” approach would be characterized by a) the willingness to almost blindly follow orders and b) the readiness to give up one’s decisions making power/bechira (I use that as a colloquial catch-all of sorts here) to someone/something who knew better. This would have been exemplified by a Kabbalas Torah she’bi-ktav alone.
The idea of coercion, vis-à-vis Kabbalas HaTorah, in the simplest possible terms, was G-d telling Bnei Yisrael: you don’t get to be “Bnei” forever. This is gonna involve intellectual effort, intellectual responsibility, and a lot of growing up. G-d realizes it may not happen right away—which, to my mind, is why the the threat of the k’fias ha’har is couched in the terminology “sham teheh kevuraschem”—your grave will be there, i. e. eventual, down the road, when you need to be grown-up about these things.
In contemporary terms, this plays out in the educational approach to what we might call pop culture. Contemporary pop culture is strongly predicated nowadays on the perpetual adolescence and adolentification (I made that word up) of just about everybody, the strongest examples being the early sexualization of the way-too-young and the acting-as-teenage inclinations of those ostensibly way too old for that kind of behaviorMuch of Torah is a protest against this (part of Torah’s nature as a “sustained protest” against “pagan culture”, to paraphrase Rabbi Jonathan Sacks).
(Full disclosure: as I’ve written be-ferush on my Saw You At Sinai profile, I live and breathe pop culture. I actually turned down a potential date because her profile said “Denfinitely NOT Owning a TV.” Pum fahkert. So maybe I’m as guiltier of “profiling” than the “right-wing.” So much I will be modeh my biases. But again, I digress.)
The problem is, the chinuch “Establishment”—again, I use that as a catch-all, but a relevant one—seems to have employed the perpetual infantilization of its charges as a counter-tactic. Better that they never have to make a decision. Too much of what passes for “da’as Torah” and “emunas chachamim” nowadays falls into this category…and that’s when those concepts are actually textually and intellectually SALIENT. (And this is in “adult” education; never mind schools.)
The message of the k’fias ha-har is that infantilzing your charges is NEVER the answer. It might actually be a “chukkas ha-goy”: witness the “bibliolatry” (Yeshayahu Liebowitz’ term) of the "Biblical Inerrancy" of Christian right and Don't-Flush-Me Koraniacs. (Another reason for the frum to be wary of alliances woth doctrinaire conservative. But that’s another discussion.)
(As are issues surrounding daas Torah/emunas chachamim: believe me. I WILL get to that. Sooner than you might like. But not this week.)
I don't know what a more succesful "adult" approach to chinuch is, or would be.
But I'm not a mechanech.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Beshalach: Erev Rav
[Later note: I fell into the misconception--wherever it came from--that the concept of Erev Rav first appears in Beshalach. The posuk actually appears in Bo. The rest of my points still stand.]
I was all set to write a column about Jews who I thought comprised today’s ‘erev rav.
It was originally inspired by EPSN’s Max Kellerman who has said: “There are no self-hating Jews; there are only Jewish antisemites.”
I was going to list the usual suspects, starting with CAMERA’s comprehensive list of anti-Israeli Jews, then on to Sander Gilman’s Jewish Self-Hatred, and Barry Rubin’s Assimilation and Its Discontents (although be careful of Rubin’s treatment of the story of Yosef; the relevant Rashi was unread or ignored.)
I was further inspired to pursue this inyan when I read that Naomi Klein, dean/queen of antiglobalism, who, having once done some soul-searching (as far as a hard leftist can) about resisting her inclinations to be anti-Zionist, finally fully crossed over when she announced that it was time to boycott Israel—the same way South Africa was boycotted--because of Israel’s “excesses” in Gaza. This from a leading light of the cultural Left with a lot of cachet.
I was all set to present a thesis on how to categorize the various madregas of Jewish self-hatred, or erevravness, apply to different prominent self-hating Jews/Jewish antisemites.
Then I started to actually research the issue further on the Web, and suddenly realized two things:
One, that no matter how well I present my argument, I might be engaging in a machlokes agavra (i.e. ad hominem) as opposed to acheftza (the actual issue), if not being outright tautological; and
Two, I started to get “intern” syndrome, wondering whether I myself belonged in the erev rav category, owing to my political-social-religional proclivities. (Not necessarily in that order.)
A sampling from the blogosphere convinced me to think twice about wielding the term like a bludgeon.
Enter at your own risk.
www.endtimeprophecies.org/html/pogrom_2006.html
After a full and productively evil life of about 120 years, the mask has been removed from the Erev-Rav….[] the clothes have been removed to reveal the ugly nakedness of secular Zionism.
www.dreamingofmoshiach.blogspot.com/2006/06/erev-rav-gog-and-rivers-overflowing.html
“The deep like a garment is its clothing: the waters stood above the mountains”: A cunning person commits his actions by keeping quiet or in darkness. We cannot see it because it's concealed well. This is the Erev Rav (Israel Government).
www.holmininternational613.com/index_english.html
“…AND THEY ARE CALLED EREV RAV BECAUSE THEY ARE THE HEADS (LEADERS) OF THE JEWS IN EXILE AND THEREFORE THEY ARE CALLED RAV.” (LIKUTIM HA GRA)
www.frumteens.com/topic.php?topic_id=6981&forum_id=45&topic_title=Zionist+Crazy+Hatred&forum_title=Zionists%2C+and+Arabs%2C+and+Eretz+Yisroel&M=0
That the Erev Rav is always with us is all over our seforim. But worse yet, the Arizal (shaar hapesukim, v'eschanan) writes that "nowadays the majority of the geenration is from the erev rav…” and the Divrei Chaim (Moadim, Hashmatos to Vayakhel) writes that "nowadays, the majority of rabbonim and chasidim and baalei batim in this generation are form the erev rav".And if the Arizal wrote that in his generation, and the Divrei Chaim in his, it cause s one to tremble when one thinks how it applies in ours. Especially since even among the erev rav there are different levels. The Zohar in Bereishis writes that there are 5 levels of erev rav, the lowest of which is Amalek!
www.godssecret.wordpress.com/category/entities/
It is these kinds of souls that are incarnated among the Jews which have been a cause of so much anti Semitism. As people don’t know that these people may be born from Jewish mothers but their souls are not that of incarnations of Jews, but “erev rav”. Its revealed only 1 person out of 5 was a Jew who left Egypt, the rest were “erev rav”. So many of the “Jews” in exile among the nations are certainly “erev rav”. It was said by a wise man that close to 1/3 of the Jews living in Israel today are “erev rav” (mixed multitude). Amalek and these other entities mentioned here are not only incarnated in the MIXED MULTITUDE but among the nations also, so beware.
www.yisrael.freeforums.org/
When possible, please provide a picture with a few sentences explaining why you think this person is a member of The Erev Rav.
(And who said Google was anti-Zionist?)
Prior to my internet research, I consulted a sefer called Eleh Maasei which asserted, based on various Zohars, Or HaChaims, and some bon mots from Rav Yoel d’Satmar (I think the author, Rav Dan Schwartz, is a Satmar kollelnik), that the erev rav:
--Were not chased into the Yam Suf by Pharaoh, did not cross it, and therefore did not experience (at least not as direct benificiaries of) Krias Yam Suf.
--Necessitated a Ma-amad Har Sinai taking place outside Eretz Yisrael and a 40-year galus; without an erev rav, Bnei Yisrael would have gone straight to Eretz Yisrael and received the Torah there.
--Were outside the machaneh from the get go: they were not under the ananei hakavod, they only ate the leftover manna given to them by the Jews, they were not actually at Ma-amad Har Sinai and consequently did not receive the Torah (although the men did get milah, so apparently a mass conversion did take place).
--Can be held responsible for all the major averos committed by the dor hamidbar (when Datan/Aviram and Korach weren’t responsible): in short, everything that Moshe alludes to at the beginning of Sefer Devarim, including (especially) the egel and the meraglim.
So, if the erev ran were so dangerous, why bring them along in the first place? This could be a mistake with national repercussions on the order of Yaakov not divorcing Leah.
Interestingly enough, it was the afformentioned Godssecret website that explained why the erev rav were not only tolerated, but even welcomed:
“Bringing this mixed multitude out of Egypt was the only thing Moses decided to do on his own accord. God did not instruct Moses to take the mixed multitude out of Egypt. Nor did He disapprove of it. Moses reasoned that the souls of Isreal [sic] that would fall among the nations while in exile would be more difficult to find and redeem. This would cause the exile to last longer. Moses made a deal with God that these souls instead of beings scattered to the 4 corners of the earth would be incarnated among the “erev rav” (mixed multitude) which would always be close to the Jewish people. So it is easier to bring these souls back.”
Similarly, the Eleh Maasei explains the apparent necessary evil—or evil necessity—of including the ‘erev rav in geulas miztrayim, which he gets “mitoch hasefarim”: loosely speaking, there was a pegam left from Adam and the chet etz hadaas that was still in need of tikkun, and the “Jewish” portion of his primal (indeed, the Primal) soul got mixed up with the “non-Jewish” portion. Something like that.
(I once heard from a reasonable Chabadnik that those enslaved in shibud mitzrayim were gilgulim of those who had worked on the Migdal Bavel. So this might add up, one way or the other. Tzorech Iyun.)
So the erev rav play a role, however problematic (Satanic, even?). Small comfort. Even, or especially, if it turns out I’m one of them. (I have seen the enemy and he is…or the enemy has seen me and I am….)
So I reverted back original pshat to come to some sort of resolution: what are/were the erev rav in the parsha?
One: it is clear that at the outset, the erev rav who joined up, whatever their motivation, were NOT originally supposed to be included in bris and/or zechus Avos at the time of yetzias mitrayim, as they were not genealogical (nor, it seems, spiritual) descendents of Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov.
Two: nowadays, like Amalek, we can never know who they are. Which is why it is (at least) hashkafically dangerous to label anyone who is irrefutably Jewish as erev rav; it might be (however loosely) akin to saying that a person is mizera Amalek.
Especially when it is said that the real apocalyptic battle is not with Esav or Yishmael, but the Erev Rav.
Eventually, I will be pursue my original thesis about self-hating Jews/Jewish antisemites, in due time---on my Cognitive Dissidents blog. Conspicuously absent will be any reference to anyone as erev rav.
That said, as most of the references above wield the accusation of erev rav against people who are either insufficiently religious or Zionist, what happens when the “sufficiently religious” actively and openly collude with sworn mortal enemies of their ostensible brethren/sistren? I leave you with this.
www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/rosnerGuest.jhtml?itemNo=796902
Like many other humanists, Jewish and non-Jewish, Neturei Karta members have exhibited concern about the distressing predicament of the Palestinians. One of their members, Rabbi Moshe Hirsch served as a member in Arafat's government, incidentally not the only Jew to hold a prominent position in the Palestinian Authority. Neturei Karta members prayed at Arafat's bedside, toured the Hezbollah territory in Lebanon and met with the current Iranian president. Satmar rabbis visited Iran attempting to free Jewish prisoners there. Neturei Karta regularly demonstrate alongside Palestinians against the very existence of the Zionist state. These activities invite positive coverage of these Jews, complete with beards and side curls, in Arab and Muslim media certainly.
Any of these people in Havana or Caracas yet?
Forget erev rav.
I’d like to know where the precedents for this kind of behavior can be found in any Biblical or Halachic literature.
I was all set to write a column about Jews who I thought comprised today’s ‘erev rav.
It was originally inspired by EPSN’s Max Kellerman who has said: “There are no self-hating Jews; there are only Jewish antisemites.”
I was going to list the usual suspects, starting with CAMERA’s comprehensive list of anti-Israeli Jews, then on to Sander Gilman’s Jewish Self-Hatred, and Barry Rubin’s Assimilation and Its Discontents (although be careful of Rubin’s treatment of the story of Yosef; the relevant Rashi was unread or ignored.)
I was further inspired to pursue this inyan when I read that Naomi Klein, dean/queen of antiglobalism, who, having once done some soul-searching (as far as a hard leftist can) about resisting her inclinations to be anti-Zionist, finally fully crossed over when she announced that it was time to boycott Israel—the same way South Africa was boycotted--because of Israel’s “excesses” in Gaza. This from a leading light of the cultural Left with a lot of cachet.
I was all set to present a thesis on how to categorize the various madregas of Jewish self-hatred, or erevravness, apply to different prominent self-hating Jews/Jewish antisemites.
Then I started to actually research the issue further on the Web, and suddenly realized two things:
One, that no matter how well I present my argument, I might be engaging in a machlokes agavra (i.e. ad hominem) as opposed to acheftza (the actual issue), if not being outright tautological; and
Two, I started to get “intern” syndrome, wondering whether I myself belonged in the erev rav category, owing to my political-social-religional proclivities. (Not necessarily in that order.)
A sampling from the blogosphere convinced me to think twice about wielding the term like a bludgeon.
Enter at your own risk.
www.endtimeprophecies.org/html/pogrom_2006.html
After a full and productively evil life of about 120 years, the mask has been removed from the Erev-Rav….[] the clothes have been removed to reveal the ugly nakedness of secular Zionism.
www.dreamingofmoshiach.blogspot.com/2006/06/erev-rav-gog-and-rivers-overflowing.html
“The deep like a garment is its clothing: the waters stood above the mountains”: A cunning person commits his actions by keeping quiet or in darkness. We cannot see it because it's concealed well. This is the Erev Rav (Israel Government).
www.holmininternational613.com/index_english.html
“…AND THEY ARE CALLED EREV RAV BECAUSE THEY ARE THE HEADS (LEADERS) OF THE JEWS IN EXILE AND THEREFORE THEY ARE CALLED RAV.” (LIKUTIM HA GRA)
www.frumteens.com/topic.php?topic_id=6981&forum_id=45&topic_title=Zionist+Crazy+Hatred&forum_title=Zionists%2C+and+Arabs%2C+and+Eretz+Yisroel&M=0
That the Erev Rav is always with us is all over our seforim. But worse yet, the Arizal (shaar hapesukim, v'eschanan) writes that "nowadays the majority of the geenration is from the erev rav…” and the Divrei Chaim (Moadim, Hashmatos to Vayakhel) writes that "nowadays, the majority of rabbonim and chasidim and baalei batim in this generation are form the erev rav".And if the Arizal wrote that in his generation, and the Divrei Chaim in his, it cause s one to tremble when one thinks how it applies in ours. Especially since even among the erev rav there are different levels. The Zohar in Bereishis writes that there are 5 levels of erev rav, the lowest of which is Amalek!
www.godssecret.wordpress.com/category/entities/
It is these kinds of souls that are incarnated among the Jews which have been a cause of so much anti Semitism. As people don’t know that these people may be born from Jewish mothers but their souls are not that of incarnations of Jews, but “erev rav”. Its revealed only 1 person out of 5 was a Jew who left Egypt, the rest were “erev rav”. So many of the “Jews” in exile among the nations are certainly “erev rav”. It was said by a wise man that close to 1/3 of the Jews living in Israel today are “erev rav” (mixed multitude). Amalek and these other entities mentioned here are not only incarnated in the MIXED MULTITUDE but among the nations also, so beware.
www.yisrael.freeforums.org/
When possible, please provide a picture with a few sentences explaining why you think this person is a member of The Erev Rav.
(And who said Google was anti-Zionist?)
Prior to my internet research, I consulted a sefer called Eleh Maasei which asserted, based on various Zohars, Or HaChaims, and some bon mots from Rav Yoel d’Satmar (I think the author, Rav Dan Schwartz, is a Satmar kollelnik), that the erev rav:
--Were not chased into the Yam Suf by Pharaoh, did not cross it, and therefore did not experience (at least not as direct benificiaries of) Krias Yam Suf.
--Necessitated a Ma-amad Har Sinai taking place outside Eretz Yisrael and a 40-year galus; without an erev rav, Bnei Yisrael would have gone straight to Eretz Yisrael and received the Torah there.
--Were outside the machaneh from the get go: they were not under the ananei hakavod, they only ate the leftover manna given to them by the Jews, they were not actually at Ma-amad Har Sinai and consequently did not receive the Torah (although the men did get milah, so apparently a mass conversion did take place).
--Can be held responsible for all the major averos committed by the dor hamidbar (when Datan/Aviram and Korach weren’t responsible): in short, everything that Moshe alludes to at the beginning of Sefer Devarim, including (especially) the egel and the meraglim.
So, if the erev ran were so dangerous, why bring them along in the first place? This could be a mistake with national repercussions on the order of Yaakov not divorcing Leah.
Interestingly enough, it was the afformentioned Godssecret website that explained why the erev rav were not only tolerated, but even welcomed:
“Bringing this mixed multitude out of Egypt was the only thing Moses decided to do on his own accord. God did not instruct Moses to take the mixed multitude out of Egypt. Nor did He disapprove of it. Moses reasoned that the souls of Isreal [sic] that would fall among the nations while in exile would be more difficult to find and redeem. This would cause the exile to last longer. Moses made a deal with God that these souls instead of beings scattered to the 4 corners of the earth would be incarnated among the “erev rav” (mixed multitude) which would always be close to the Jewish people. So it is easier to bring these souls back.”
Similarly, the Eleh Maasei explains the apparent necessary evil—or evil necessity—of including the ‘erev rav in geulas miztrayim, which he gets “mitoch hasefarim”: loosely speaking, there was a pegam left from Adam and the chet etz hadaas that was still in need of tikkun, and the “Jewish” portion of his primal (indeed, the Primal) soul got mixed up with the “non-Jewish” portion. Something like that.
(I once heard from a reasonable Chabadnik that those enslaved in shibud mitzrayim were gilgulim of those who had worked on the Migdal Bavel. So this might add up, one way or the other. Tzorech Iyun.)
So the erev rav play a role, however problematic (Satanic, even?). Small comfort. Even, or especially, if it turns out I’m one of them. (I have seen the enemy and he is…or the enemy has seen me and I am….)
So I reverted back original pshat to come to some sort of resolution: what are/were the erev rav in the parsha?
One: it is clear that at the outset, the erev rav who joined up, whatever their motivation, were NOT originally supposed to be included in bris and/or zechus Avos at the time of yetzias mitrayim, as they were not genealogical (nor, it seems, spiritual) descendents of Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov.
Two: nowadays, like Amalek, we can never know who they are. Which is why it is (at least) hashkafically dangerous to label anyone who is irrefutably Jewish as erev rav; it might be (however loosely) akin to saying that a person is mizera Amalek.
Especially when it is said that the real apocalyptic battle is not with Esav or Yishmael, but the Erev Rav.
Eventually, I will be pursue my original thesis about self-hating Jews/Jewish antisemites, in due time---on my Cognitive Dissidents blog. Conspicuously absent will be any reference to anyone as erev rav.
That said, as most of the references above wield the accusation of erev rav against people who are either insufficiently religious or Zionist, what happens when the “sufficiently religious” actively and openly collude with sworn mortal enemies of their ostensible brethren/sistren? I leave you with this.
www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/rosnerGuest.jhtml?itemNo=796902
Like many other humanists, Jewish and non-Jewish, Neturei Karta members have exhibited concern about the distressing predicament of the Palestinians. One of their members, Rabbi Moshe Hirsch served as a member in Arafat's government, incidentally not the only Jew to hold a prominent position in the Palestinian Authority. Neturei Karta members prayed at Arafat's bedside, toured the Hezbollah territory in Lebanon and met with the current Iranian president. Satmar rabbis visited Iran attempting to free Jewish prisoners there. Neturei Karta regularly demonstrate alongside Palestinians against the very existence of the Zionist state. These activities invite positive coverage of these Jews, complete with beards and side curls, in Arab and Muslim media certainly.
Any of these people in Havana or Caracas yet?
Forget erev rav.
I’d like to know where the precedents for this kind of behavior can be found in any Biblical or Halachic literature.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Bo: Schadenfreude
"There is something in the very nature of the universe which is on the side of Israel in its struggle with every Egypt."--Martin Luther King Jr.
In my piece on Parshas Miketz I pointed out what might have been the first recorded example of institutionalized racism: Bereishis 43:32, where the “Egyptians could not eat [together with the] Hebrews, because it was an abomination for Egypt.” I also discussed in detail the moral implications of exploiting ethno-racial tensions for one’s group benefit.
A similar case occurs in Parshas Bo. As Moses warns Pharaoh of the impending makas bechoros, he tells of the range of victims (Shemos 11:5): “from the first-born of Pharaoh who sits on his throne even unto the first born of the maidservant”; and later, when the plague actually takes place (12:29): “from the first-born of Pharaoh who sits on his throne even unto the first born of the captive in the pit”. Rashi’s comments are telling: the other slaves and prisoners who were victims of Pharaonic tyranny rejoiced at Israel's suffering and participated in their debasement.
I might have been able to relate to the shvuyim and avadim. During my school-age years, I was not only the classic class nerd-geek, but a nerd-geek li’mehadrin: a loser le’chol hadayos. Even the other nerds would pick on me. Apparently, not only would we be relieved when the powers-that-be would focus their malevolence on someone else; it would indicate that someone else was at the bottom of the pecking order.
Yet I was at a recent Shabbos meal relaying a theory I had about the current conflict in Gaza, that the Palestinian “civilians” of that territory had brought about their own predicament as they had “freely elected” a terrorist government. I heard a complaint that the exhibition of schadenfraude was not a Jewish trait; after all, did not G-d silence the angels when the Egyptians were drowning in the Red Sea? I retorted: one, the angels were silenced, but the Jews kept on singing; two, as the gemara in Megilla (16b) relates when Mordechai gave Haman a kick as he was being helped up onto the King’s horse and Haman weakly quoted “binpol oyivcha al tismach”, Mordechai responded “hani mili be’Yisrael”—but, regarding those such as you—“ve’ata al bamoseimo tidroch”, [you] we will tread upon [their] your heights.
This is especially prevalent nowadays, what with the international community, terrorist sympathizers, and terrorists themselves counting on our deluding ourselves into thinking that self-defense—never mind scahdenfreude—is somehow both dishonorable and un-Jewish. Occasionally, a quote attributed to Caligula may come to mind (“Don’t instruct me how to deal with my enemies”) but an exegesis of Dr. King’s adage that opens this essay should suffice: while one should always be on the side of the Israel against the Egypt, one does NOT need to be on the side of the angels (e.g., as the ones who were instructed by G-d to stop singing at krias yam suf), particularly when one's survival is on the line.
Or, more poignantly, the medrash: "Kol ha-merachem al ha-achzarim, sofo le-achzer al ha-rachmanim"--all who are merciful toward the cruel, will eventually be cruel toward the mmerciful. A more pertinent description of the current moral universe would be hard to find.
Know your Israels.
Know your Egypts.
In my piece on Parshas Miketz I pointed out what might have been the first recorded example of institutionalized racism: Bereishis 43:32, where the “Egyptians could not eat [together with the] Hebrews, because it was an abomination for Egypt.” I also discussed in detail the moral implications of exploiting ethno-racial tensions for one’s group benefit.
A similar case occurs in Parshas Bo. As Moses warns Pharaoh of the impending makas bechoros, he tells of the range of victims (Shemos 11:5): “from the first-born of Pharaoh who sits on his throne even unto the first born of the maidservant”; and later, when the plague actually takes place (12:29): “from the first-born of Pharaoh who sits on his throne even unto the first born of the captive in the pit”. Rashi’s comments are telling: the other slaves and prisoners who were victims of Pharaonic tyranny rejoiced at Israel's suffering and participated in their debasement.
I might have been able to relate to the shvuyim and avadim. During my school-age years, I was not only the classic class nerd-geek, but a nerd-geek li’mehadrin: a loser le’chol hadayos. Even the other nerds would pick on me. Apparently, not only would we be relieved when the powers-that-be would focus their malevolence on someone else; it would indicate that someone else was at the bottom of the pecking order.
Yet I was at a recent Shabbos meal relaying a theory I had about the current conflict in Gaza, that the Palestinian “civilians” of that territory had brought about their own predicament as they had “freely elected” a terrorist government. I heard a complaint that the exhibition of schadenfraude was not a Jewish trait; after all, did not G-d silence the angels when the Egyptians were drowning in the Red Sea? I retorted: one, the angels were silenced, but the Jews kept on singing; two, as the gemara in Megilla (16b) relates when Mordechai gave Haman a kick as he was being helped up onto the King’s horse and Haman weakly quoted “binpol oyivcha al tismach”, Mordechai responded “hani mili be’Yisrael”—but, regarding those such as you—“ve’ata al bamoseimo tidroch”, [you] we will tread upon [their] your heights.
This is especially prevalent nowadays, what with the international community, terrorist sympathizers, and terrorists themselves counting on our deluding ourselves into thinking that self-defense—never mind scahdenfreude—is somehow both dishonorable and un-Jewish. Occasionally, a quote attributed to Caligula may come to mind (“Don’t instruct me how to deal with my enemies”) but an exegesis of Dr. King’s adage that opens this essay should suffice: while one should always be on the side of the Israel against the Egypt, one does NOT need to be on the side of the angels (e.g., as the ones who were instructed by G-d to stop singing at krias yam suf), particularly when one's survival is on the line.
Or, more poignantly, the medrash: "Kol ha-merachem al ha-achzarim, sofo le-achzer al ha-rachmanim"--all who are merciful toward the cruel, will eventually be cruel toward the mmerciful. A more pertinent description of the current moral universe would be hard to find.
Know your Israels.
Know your Egypts.
Friday, January 23, 2009
Vaera: First Families and In/Tolerance
Originally, my theme was going to be about “first families”, what with the undeniably historical moment of the inauguration of President Obama.
Without stretching the analogy too much, I was going to try to find parallels between the Torah’s apparent digression from the beginning of the geula story to a partial recount of the Bnei Yisrael geneaology in listing the generations of Reuven, Shimon and Levi.
The obvious question is why the partial lineage recount, and Rashi states that in truth only Levite generations were supposed to be recounted here, so as to arrive at Moshe and Aharon (hence, “First Families”), but because Yaakov’s parting brachos in Parshas Vayechi began with rebukes of these three families, they all merited mention here as reminder of their chashivus.
I would posit that Rashi was trying to tell us something about the nature of leadership in his linking of the birkos Yaakov with this parsha: that leadership involves the ability to withstand criticism (even, sometimes, the ad hominem variety) before one takes office; that much true leadership is forged in crises; and, that the families of leaders can be very instructive about the nature of said leaders, to the point that sometimes questions that involve close scrutiny of said leaders’ families are not necessarily out of bounds (witness how the Torah puts Aharon’s shidduch under a microscope).
I was going to draw parallels from both the recently departed and new sworn in Presdiential administration, in spite of (or maybe because of) the extensive media and other coverages harping on just these themes.
Then Reb Shlomo Ressler’s weekly Dvar arrived in my inbox, and I had a whole new theme to contend with:
The Rebbi of Gur explains, the Hebrew word that means 'burden' (“sivlos”) also means 'tolerant', which would make the Passuk (verse) read..."I will deliver you from being tolerant of Egypt…they were too tolerant of their surroundings! Hashem therefore told them, and is telling us, that the first step Jews have to take is to realize when we are 'slaves' to our society. If we tolerate our surroundings, not only will we not appreciate how LUCKY we are to be different, but also we'll forget that we even ARE different! In a society where some people hide their religious identity, the Torah is telling us to always keep in mind our ultimate differences as Jews, to never settle for being just like everyone else, and to love it, show it, and prove it in constructive ways every chance we get!
Being the cold-blooded “modernist” that I am, my instinctual reading of this was two-fold: first, as an exhortation to play up more visible cultural differences; and two, an implicit instruction to follow what is known as “Da’as Torah”, as opposed to current mainstream ethical norms, as our ultimate moral arbiters. Hence, the exhortations to be “intolerant”.
Fair enough, as far as it goes. Perfect fodder for my usual “modern” polemics.
So I decided to go one better: turn all of these themes on their head.
In last weeks’ parsha, when Moshe and Aharon first approach Pharaoh, they are kicked out the palace with a “Lechu le’sivloseichem!”—“Go back to your work”, which Rashi expounds to mean that none of b’nei Levi were actually enslaved. It was almost as if Pharaoh disbelieved that these “elite” Hebrews could actually care about their less fortunate brethren: “What are you guys doing? You actually have your own lives. You have an elite position as priests. You actually care about your charges’ conditions?” This is the first “sivlos” that Bnei Yisrael must be removed from.
It’s possible that Pharaoh read Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man and figured that the elite of an oppressed people would emulate Bledsoe, the college president, who has settled into a black stereotype in order to succeed in the white-dominated society: “You let the white folk worry about pride and dignity—you learn where you are and get yourself power, influence, contacts with powerful and influential people—then stay in the dark and use it!” It doesn’t occur to Pharaoh that there is another type of leader. Again, the parallels—however loose—to our new President are evident: the question of what you do with power when you ostensibly come from the ranks of the powerless, but in point of fact have been able to avoid many of the “sivlos” that your less fortunate brethren/sistren have not, and have had your own “sivlos” to deal with. You also may or may not have a clearer picture of what are “sivlos”, and, on the other hand, might require “savlanus”.
My second point would definitely be taken as more controversial: as much as midrashim and commentaries harp on bnei yisrael practically drowning in the tumah of eretz mitzrayim to the point that they teetered on the precipice of the 49th sha’ar, they also go out of their way to point out the nevertheless bnei yisrael actually merited geual because they stubbornly maintained their ethno-cultural identity: “Lo shinu es shemam, leshonam, malbusham”: they didn’t change their distinctive names, language, or garb.
So they never tried to blend in, even as they absorbed Egyptian culture?
I think that this is where we have to look at an alternate translation of “sivlos” not just as “tolerance”, but as “patience” (“Savlanut” being a characteristic Israeli rallying cry), a sort of spiritual complacency. Its possible that the Hebrews in mitzrayim might actually have been “frum” enough by some standards. There are midrashim that say the meraglim were afraid that once in Eretz Yisrael, the Jews, no longer getting the manna and learning 24/7, would lose their exalted spiritual level; hence they issued the dibba ra’ah: “nitnah rosh ve’nashuva mitraymah”—lets go back to Egypt where we were frummer! Even in such a depraved environment—but WE were frum!
They could no longer take what they perceived as spiritual risks…even when G-d mandated it.
In his treatment of Megillas Esther (“The Dawn”), Yoram Hazony makes a distinction between purity and morality, especially in the political arena. As I understand it, he basically says that the strive for purity comes as the expense of morality; in other words, its almost immoral to strive for a level of purity that removes one from the necessity to take risks, even spiritual ones. (This is why Mordechai, after all he did to save the Jews, was only “ratzui le’rov echav” as opposed to “kol echav”—some people weren’t happy that he had the “gall” to leave the beis medrash.)
This, I think is the link between “First Families” and “Tolerance” as far as leadership goes: the realization that, whether one seeks high office or has it thrust upon them, that exercise of leadership involves grave responsibilities on a moral level, and that making choices based upon what seems to be “purer” and ostensibly avoids moral/spiritual risk may not always necessarily be the right choice.
Without stretching the analogy too much, I was going to try to find parallels between the Torah’s apparent digression from the beginning of the geula story to a partial recount of the Bnei Yisrael geneaology in listing the generations of Reuven, Shimon and Levi.
The obvious question is why the partial lineage recount, and Rashi states that in truth only Levite generations were supposed to be recounted here, so as to arrive at Moshe and Aharon (hence, “First Families”), but because Yaakov’s parting brachos in Parshas Vayechi began with rebukes of these three families, they all merited mention here as reminder of their chashivus.
I would posit that Rashi was trying to tell us something about the nature of leadership in his linking of the birkos Yaakov with this parsha: that leadership involves the ability to withstand criticism (even, sometimes, the ad hominem variety) before one takes office; that much true leadership is forged in crises; and, that the families of leaders can be very instructive about the nature of said leaders, to the point that sometimes questions that involve close scrutiny of said leaders’ families are not necessarily out of bounds (witness how the Torah puts Aharon’s shidduch under a microscope).
I was going to draw parallels from both the recently departed and new sworn in Presdiential administration, in spite of (or maybe because of) the extensive media and other coverages harping on just these themes.
Then Reb Shlomo Ressler’s weekly Dvar arrived in my inbox, and I had a whole new theme to contend with:
The Rebbi of Gur explains, the Hebrew word that means 'burden' (“sivlos”) also means 'tolerant', which would make the Passuk (verse) read..."I will deliver you from being tolerant of Egypt…they were too tolerant of their surroundings! Hashem therefore told them, and is telling us, that the first step Jews have to take is to realize when we are 'slaves' to our society. If we tolerate our surroundings, not only will we not appreciate how LUCKY we are to be different, but also we'll forget that we even ARE different! In a society where some people hide their religious identity, the Torah is telling us to always keep in mind our ultimate differences as Jews, to never settle for being just like everyone else, and to love it, show it, and prove it in constructive ways every chance we get!
Being the cold-blooded “modernist” that I am, my instinctual reading of this was two-fold: first, as an exhortation to play up more visible cultural differences; and two, an implicit instruction to follow what is known as “Da’as Torah”, as opposed to current mainstream ethical norms, as our ultimate moral arbiters. Hence, the exhortations to be “intolerant”.
Fair enough, as far as it goes. Perfect fodder for my usual “modern” polemics.
So I decided to go one better: turn all of these themes on their head.
In last weeks’ parsha, when Moshe and Aharon first approach Pharaoh, they are kicked out the palace with a “Lechu le’sivloseichem!”—“Go back to your work”, which Rashi expounds to mean that none of b’nei Levi were actually enslaved. It was almost as if Pharaoh disbelieved that these “elite” Hebrews could actually care about their less fortunate brethren: “What are you guys doing? You actually have your own lives. You have an elite position as priests. You actually care about your charges’ conditions?” This is the first “sivlos” that Bnei Yisrael must be removed from.
It’s possible that Pharaoh read Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man and figured that the elite of an oppressed people would emulate Bledsoe, the college president, who has settled into a black stereotype in order to succeed in the white-dominated society: “You let the white folk worry about pride and dignity—you learn where you are and get yourself power, influence, contacts with powerful and influential people—then stay in the dark and use it!” It doesn’t occur to Pharaoh that there is another type of leader. Again, the parallels—however loose—to our new President are evident: the question of what you do with power when you ostensibly come from the ranks of the powerless, but in point of fact have been able to avoid many of the “sivlos” that your less fortunate brethren/sistren have not, and have had your own “sivlos” to deal with. You also may or may not have a clearer picture of what are “sivlos”, and, on the other hand, might require “savlanus”.
My second point would definitely be taken as more controversial: as much as midrashim and commentaries harp on bnei yisrael practically drowning in the tumah of eretz mitzrayim to the point that they teetered on the precipice of the 49th sha’ar, they also go out of their way to point out the nevertheless bnei yisrael actually merited geual because they stubbornly maintained their ethno-cultural identity: “Lo shinu es shemam, leshonam, malbusham”: they didn’t change their distinctive names, language, or garb.
So they never tried to blend in, even as they absorbed Egyptian culture?
I think that this is where we have to look at an alternate translation of “sivlos” not just as “tolerance”, but as “patience” (“Savlanut” being a characteristic Israeli rallying cry), a sort of spiritual complacency. Its possible that the Hebrews in mitzrayim might actually have been “frum” enough by some standards. There are midrashim that say the meraglim were afraid that once in Eretz Yisrael, the Jews, no longer getting the manna and learning 24/7, would lose their exalted spiritual level; hence they issued the dibba ra’ah: “nitnah rosh ve’nashuva mitraymah”—lets go back to Egypt where we were frummer! Even in such a depraved environment—but WE were frum!
They could no longer take what they perceived as spiritual risks…even when G-d mandated it.
In his treatment of Megillas Esther (“The Dawn”), Yoram Hazony makes a distinction between purity and morality, especially in the political arena. As I understand it, he basically says that the strive for purity comes as the expense of morality; in other words, its almost immoral to strive for a level of purity that removes one from the necessity to take risks, even spiritual ones. (This is why Mordechai, after all he did to save the Jews, was only “ratzui le’rov echav” as opposed to “kol echav”—some people weren’t happy that he had the “gall” to leave the beis medrash.)
This, I think is the link between “First Families” and “Tolerance” as far as leadership goes: the realization that, whether one seeks high office or has it thrust upon them, that exercise of leadership involves grave responsibilities on a moral level, and that making choices based upon what seems to be “purer” and ostensibly avoids moral/spiritual risk may not always necessarily be the right choice.
Friday, January 16, 2009
Shemos: Syllabi
The question is asked in the very first Rashi in Bereishis why the Torah doesn’t start from “Hachodesh hazeh lachem rosh chadashim”, in Bo. The answer there is given that its to teach the lesson that, b’kitzur, G-d giveth and taketh away—-or, more poignantly, G-d taketh away and giveth to someone else you may not at all like—-at his leisure and convenience, because everything belongs to Him.
Jump to the beginning of Sefer Vayikra and from the outset we are referred back to Bereishis, when the posuk says “Adam ki yakriv mi-kem”: your sacrificial offerings msut be as free from the taint of gezel as if from “Adam”, i.e. the categorical impossibility of Adam HaRishon stealing anything, because everything in the world belonged to him.
(I’m not sure whether Tony Montana had this Rashi in mind when he adopted “The World Is Yours" as his motto. However, he knew when someone was a "chazzar": "the guy, he wants more than what he needs.")
This provides another one of the classical midrashic-haskafic conundra that pop up from time to time (e.g., the free will mishna in Avos, “hakol tzafui he-hasreshut nitnah”), but I propose that the apparent tension inherent in these two Rashis—everything is G-d’s vs. everything is Adam’s—can be used to illustrate the links between what might be termed the central theme of S'farim Bereishis and Vayikra, how Shemos serves as the bridge between the two, and how the "bridging" is the theme of Shemos itself.
Once at a (mighta been an UWS) shabbos meal I mused aloud that Sefer Bereshis was, when you got down to it, all about…relationships. Specifically, relationships involving…relations; especially, inappropriate relations, ones that ran the gamut in levels of impropriety.
(What I’m obviously circumlocuting here is that I said Bereishis was all about sex. It got everyones attention but ultimately detracted from what I was trying to point out. Occupational hazard.)
One way to illustrate this—-and, tangentially, the tension between a universal G-d- given absolute morality yet one reliant to some degree of human intuition—-is the fact that ostensibly, the 7 mitzvos benei noach weren’t given until after the Flood, leaving the dor hamabul with a possible ex-post facto defense. Obviously, since it didn’t hold up in Court, there must have been a reason for its rejection. The Gemara in Sanhedrin details that, really, the 7 mitzvot are couched in various remazim from psukim in Bereishis when G-d talks to Adam, so the law was, as it were, already “on the books”.
Yet the fact that it wasn’t truly codified until after the mabul (hence “mitvzos benei Noach”) indicates that G-d was, to some extent, relying upon humankind to, as it were, almost intuit morality on their own (this may be one way to explain the tzelem elokim). G-d almost allowed there to be a moral laboratory, with very little constraint upon experimentation; witness the description of how idolatry began and proliferated, and the concomitant widespread explosion of sexual practices (which, Rashi and the medrash intimate, involved serious issues of lack of consent in many cases). Yet G-d didn’t close the lab until it became clear that there were no rules anymore whatsoever and the everyone’s aim was to just hurt one another. Post-flood, G-d steps in and makes the rules a bit more clear; its obvious that people needed to be pointed in the right direction.
Despite the Divine input and legislation, these themes obviously recur in a loop throughout Sefer Bereishis: both in terms of arayot (two examples: Avraham having to fight two monarchs to keep them off his wife, and the whole episode with Er and Onan and Yehuda and Tamar; see my Tznius series) and damim (for an “international” example, see Nimrod and Avraham; for an internecine example, see Yosef and his brothers).
By the time we get to the end of Sefer Bereishis, it seems that some lessons have been learned the hard way. This is indicated at the beginning of this weeks parsha: “shivim nefesh ve-yosef haya be-mitzrayim:” some semblance of a family unit with a set of stable relations between persons and sexes had been established, as a result of the travails involving Yosef.
Shemos indicates that some of the lessons of Bereishis have been learned—witness Shifra and Puah’s defiance of Pharaoh and the culture of life promulgated by the Jewish women in the direst of circumstances (“shesh be-keres echad”; “ken yirbeh”).
Then again, it indicates that there is much to be learned, both on an international level (the first recorded instance of the imposition of a specifically racio-ethno-nationally based enslavement, the Curse of Canaan notwithstanding) and internecine (Moshe, “refing” the Datan-Aviram bout, realizing that the lessons are obviously not yet learned. “Achen noda ha-davar”, indeed).
Sefer Shemos, then, links the “kol ha-aretz shel hakadosh baruch hu hi” of Bereishis 1:1 and the “Adam ha-Rishon lo hikriv min ha-gezel” of Vayikra 1:2, the bridge between the true ben Adam le-chavero: the Genesis Syllabus, if you will--and, the ultimate ben Adam la-Makom: the Vayikra Syllabus.
In truth, the syllabi aren’t all that different. Which may explain why is isn’t until Kedoshim that we will see “Ve-ahavta la-re’acha kamocha.
Somewhere after the Vayikra midterms.
Jump to the beginning of Sefer Vayikra and from the outset we are referred back to Bereishis, when the posuk says “Adam ki yakriv mi-kem”: your sacrificial offerings msut be as free from the taint of gezel as if from “Adam”, i.e. the categorical impossibility of Adam HaRishon stealing anything, because everything in the world belonged to him.
(I’m not sure whether Tony Montana had this Rashi in mind when he adopted “The World Is Yours" as his motto. However, he knew when someone was a "chazzar": "the guy, he wants more than what he needs.")
This provides another one of the classical midrashic-haskafic conundra that pop up from time to time (e.g., the free will mishna in Avos, “hakol tzafui he-hasreshut nitnah”), but I propose that the apparent tension inherent in these two Rashis—everything is G-d’s vs. everything is Adam’s—can be used to illustrate the links between what might be termed the central theme of S'farim Bereishis and Vayikra, how Shemos serves as the bridge between the two, and how the "bridging" is the theme of Shemos itself.
Once at a (mighta been an UWS) shabbos meal I mused aloud that Sefer Bereshis was, when you got down to it, all about…relationships. Specifically, relationships involving…relations; especially, inappropriate relations, ones that ran the gamut in levels of impropriety.
(What I’m obviously circumlocuting here is that I said Bereishis was all about sex. It got everyones attention but ultimately detracted from what I was trying to point out. Occupational hazard.)
One way to illustrate this—-and, tangentially, the tension between a universal G-d- given absolute morality yet one reliant to some degree of human intuition—-is the fact that ostensibly, the 7 mitzvos benei noach weren’t given until after the Flood, leaving the dor hamabul with a possible ex-post facto defense. Obviously, since it didn’t hold up in Court, there must have been a reason for its rejection. The Gemara in Sanhedrin details that, really, the 7 mitzvot are couched in various remazim from psukim in Bereishis when G-d talks to Adam, so the law was, as it were, already “on the books”.
Yet the fact that it wasn’t truly codified until after the mabul (hence “mitvzos benei Noach”) indicates that G-d was, to some extent, relying upon humankind to, as it were, almost intuit morality on their own (this may be one way to explain the tzelem elokim). G-d almost allowed there to be a moral laboratory, with very little constraint upon experimentation; witness the description of how idolatry began and proliferated, and the concomitant widespread explosion of sexual practices (which, Rashi and the medrash intimate, involved serious issues of lack of consent in many cases). Yet G-d didn’t close the lab until it became clear that there were no rules anymore whatsoever and the everyone’s aim was to just hurt one another. Post-flood, G-d steps in and makes the rules a bit more clear; its obvious that people needed to be pointed in the right direction.
Despite the Divine input and legislation, these themes obviously recur in a loop throughout Sefer Bereishis: both in terms of arayot (two examples: Avraham having to fight two monarchs to keep them off his wife, and the whole episode with Er and Onan and Yehuda and Tamar; see my Tznius series) and damim (for an “international” example, see Nimrod and Avraham; for an internecine example, see Yosef and his brothers).
By the time we get to the end of Sefer Bereishis, it seems that some lessons have been learned the hard way. This is indicated at the beginning of this weeks parsha: “shivim nefesh ve-yosef haya be-mitzrayim:” some semblance of a family unit with a set of stable relations between persons and sexes had been established, as a result of the travails involving Yosef.
Shemos indicates that some of the lessons of Bereishis have been learned—witness Shifra and Puah’s defiance of Pharaoh and the culture of life promulgated by the Jewish women in the direst of circumstances (“shesh be-keres echad”; “ken yirbeh”).
Then again, it indicates that there is much to be learned, both on an international level (the first recorded instance of the imposition of a specifically racio-ethno-nationally based enslavement, the Curse of Canaan notwithstanding) and internecine (Moshe, “refing” the Datan-Aviram bout, realizing that the lessons are obviously not yet learned. “Achen noda ha-davar”, indeed).
Sefer Shemos, then, links the “kol ha-aretz shel hakadosh baruch hu hi” of Bereishis 1:1 and the “Adam ha-Rishon lo hikriv min ha-gezel” of Vayikra 1:2, the bridge between the true ben Adam le-chavero: the Genesis Syllabus, if you will--and, the ultimate ben Adam la-Makom: the Vayikra Syllabus.
In truth, the syllabi aren’t all that different. Which may explain why is isn’t until Kedoshim that we will see “Ve-ahavta la-re’acha kamocha.
Somewhere after the Vayikra midterms.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Vayechi: Ideals
The question is often asked how Biblical characters with ruach hakodesh lived their lives almost knowing their denouements. The clearest example of this is how the Gemara in Bava Basra details how Moshe Rabbeinu wrote the psukim dealing with his passing with his own tears.
Yaakov Avinu seems to have been suffering more from this nearly schizophrenic existence; one example might be when he sees that there is “shever” in Egypt and the medrash hints that he has some inkling that Yosef is alive there, even while he mourns his loss for 22 years, during which his ruach hakodesh is supposedly absent.
However, a starker contrast between “hakol tzafui” and “hareshut nitnah” might be embodied in this parsha, where Yaakov calls all his sons together—ostensibly to reveal the actual “ketz”, or moment of the geula, before his ruach hakodesh actually departs him; so he blesses each of them in turn instead.
In a very loose sense, what we might have here is a microcosm of trying to align a reality with a narrative ideal, loosely analogous to trying to align the way things “are” with the way they “ought to be”. One real marker of gadlus particularly among the avos was how they operated within this framework, almost seemingly exercising bechira in areas where they seemed not to have any.
Yet it is precisely in our day and age when the real and ideal are sometimes confused, when values and virtues are interchangeable, that the instructivity of such a stance becomes cautionary at best. One could toss about the usual Talmudic adages—“Lo Nitnah Torah le’Malachei Hashares” and the like—but that might not even be necessary here.
Judaism, and by extension, halacha, has been termed an “ought” culture. Many complaints abound about how Jews have forsaken “Jewish values” and “ideals” for other systems of thought or morality. This is precisely the problem. “Values”, “ideals” and “oughts” are always subjective. “Ideals” are especially tenuous as goals, because once they are attained, they cease to be ideals.
To be sure, with in the “grey areas” or the “reshus” between assur and mutar, there are at times “better” courses of action (and, as I detailed last week, actions that can only be appropriate in specific situations and not at other times.) Judaism might actually turn out to be the best example of “situational ethics” there is: what applies in situation A doesn’t apply in situation B. This does not lend itself to any sort of moral relativism; on the contrary, it demands that one recognize what type of situation exists before one applies laws. Or “morals”. Or “ideals”.
Yaakov Avinu seems to have been suffering more from this nearly schizophrenic existence; one example might be when he sees that there is “shever” in Egypt and the medrash hints that he has some inkling that Yosef is alive there, even while he mourns his loss for 22 years, during which his ruach hakodesh is supposedly absent.
However, a starker contrast between “hakol tzafui” and “hareshut nitnah” might be embodied in this parsha, where Yaakov calls all his sons together—ostensibly to reveal the actual “ketz”, or moment of the geula, before his ruach hakodesh actually departs him; so he blesses each of them in turn instead.
In a very loose sense, what we might have here is a microcosm of trying to align a reality with a narrative ideal, loosely analogous to trying to align the way things “are” with the way they “ought to be”. One real marker of gadlus particularly among the avos was how they operated within this framework, almost seemingly exercising bechira in areas where they seemed not to have any.
Yet it is precisely in our day and age when the real and ideal are sometimes confused, when values and virtues are interchangeable, that the instructivity of such a stance becomes cautionary at best. One could toss about the usual Talmudic adages—“Lo Nitnah Torah le’Malachei Hashares” and the like—but that might not even be necessary here.
Judaism, and by extension, halacha, has been termed an “ought” culture. Many complaints abound about how Jews have forsaken “Jewish values” and “ideals” for other systems of thought or morality. This is precisely the problem. “Values”, “ideals” and “oughts” are always subjective. “Ideals” are especially tenuous as goals, because once they are attained, they cease to be ideals.
To be sure, with in the “grey areas” or the “reshus” between assur and mutar, there are at times “better” courses of action (and, as I detailed last week, actions that can only be appropriate in specific situations and not at other times.) Judaism might actually turn out to be the best example of “situational ethics” there is: what applies in situation A doesn’t apply in situation B. This does not lend itself to any sort of moral relativism; on the contrary, it demands that one recognize what type of situation exists before one applies laws. Or “morals”. Or “ideals”.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Vayigash: States of Emergency
All theocentric systems of thought have taken strong exception to any political philosophies that espouse strict command economies and major social engineering as prominent features of their programs. Witness, in the past century, major religions’ unbending opposition to Marxism. To be sure, the coummunist regimes’ avowed atheism played a major part; but even if they had been less militant in their godlessness, the opposition would have been nearly as unyielding.
Yet this weeks parsha, continuing from last weeks, details how Yosef, by now the almost sole source of law in Egypt (Pharaoh seemingly playing a W. role to Yosef’s Cheney), institutes an absolutely draconian command economy whereby first the money, then "moveables", and then the real estate of the Egyptian population come under the exclusive ownership of the Pharaonic regime. (All Egyptians were circumsized; all were reduced to some version of vassalage--while their offer to become actual slaves was not effected, there was a wholesale population transfer to diminish any feeling of land ownership.) Ostensibly, as I mentioned last week, this attempt to force equality on the entire population was intended to make life easier for Bnei Yisrael when these laws were to become applicable only to them. Alas.)
From the text, we can’t directly ascertain the Torah’s attitude toward this political system. In fact, it stands to reason that, in theory, the Torah might not find Yosef’s dictatorship particularly problematic, especially as it strongly favors monarchical governments, and furthermore, holds up unquestioning obeisance to a monarch as a paradigm of Avodas Hashem.
Moreover, there are other parshiyot that better lend themselves to discussions of whether Judaism favors a free market over a command economy (Behar and Bechukosai, especially) and the perils of social engineering (the story of Migdal Bavel in Noach).
I offer that, similar to what I said last week about taking advantage of ethno-political tensions for Jewish benefit, that sometimes what may not be the “best” solution may be the only solution. At the time of Yosef’s ascendance, the world was about to be plunged into its greatest economic and agricultural crisis. The Torah presents all of Yosef’s executive orders as specific responses to the increasing state of emergency.
Moreover, the fact that the Torah details how Yosef’s policy only became more incrementally draconian as the situation got worse, indicating that the socio-economic systems being implemented were far from the optimum.
My interpretation is that, on occasion, there might be something even less praiseworthy than exploiting socio-political tension. It’s the introduction of a “state of emergency” and its attendant decrees in cases where there may be none.
Anyone who has been the beneficiary of a Orthodox Torah education and is familiar with its interaction with the contemporary world at large is all too familiar with the incessant kol korei from pulpits and classrooms about the various spiritual state[s] of emergency that exist[s]. “Things have never been worse.” One wonders whether to apply Rambam’s dictum regarding the mitzvah d’oraisa of prayer applying only in crisis, but since everyday life is ipso facto a crisis, the mitzvah applies daily; or, whether one applies Reb Nachman Breslover’s adage that if you say “things can’t get any worse”, they do. (Murphy had nothing on Reb Nachman.) Alan Dershowitz’ "Tsures Theory of Jewish Survival”—that Judaism can only thrive in perpetual crisis, and that it finds itself in a worse crisis when there is less of a crisis, such as in contemporary Ameriocan society—further illustrates this dilemma.
I am not going to dispute the degree of crisis that does or does not exist ona hashkafic level. There is certainly enough of a crisis on a purely existential level (although whether that is actually any worse now than previously is also arguable). I will instead provide a few examples of why using a Crisis Hashkafa as an educational tool, if not a paradigm, can ultimately be destructive. One is Biblical, the other is more current.
The Gemara in Chelek relates how King Hezekiah instituted possibly the most compulsory system of education in Jewish, if not all recorded, history: he stuck a sword in the doorway of the beis medrash, saying “Anyone who doesn’t learn Torah will be run through with the sword.” The results, in his day, were immediately beneficial: everybody—including and especially children—knew halacha backwards and forwards. However, when his son Menashe ascended to the throne twelve years later, thirty-three years of the most widespread debauchery and bloodshed yet in Jewish history commenced. One can discern a correlation between the two when one remembers that Chizkiyahu’s policy was in response to an immediate and grave crisis: the imminent Assyrian invasion. Whether the policy was continued following Sancheriv’s defeat is not recorded; what is evident from the historical progression is that the continuation of a policy designed from crisis mode is unsustainable, and even its proper application can have unwanted effects later.
The second involves a speech I heard from prominent frum attorney Ban Brafman, famous for representing hip-hop artists and chareidim in legal difficulties. (I had to mention both; they both wear black hats.) He addressed the discomfiting phenomenon of very public criminal cases then pending against visibly fervently Orthodox Jews, some of whom he had been called to represent. Musing aloud at what their motivation might be, he offered that, in the “old country” where the authorities—both local and national—were usually openly anti-semitic, there existed a “sate of war” whereby a degree of subterfuge in dealings with the world outside the shtetl was condoned if not outright encouraged. Unfortunately, he offered, this attitude did not change when the setting changed, despite Rav Moshe Feinstein’s explicit characterization of the US as a “malchus shel chesed”. The very public chillulei Hashem that have resulted do not have be elaborated further, the secular media’s ostensible anti-chareidi bias notwithstanding.
To paraphrase Reb Nachman, if you keep saying it’s an emergency, then you’ll get an emergency.
Yet this weeks parsha, continuing from last weeks, details how Yosef, by now the almost sole source of law in Egypt (Pharaoh seemingly playing a W. role to Yosef’s Cheney), institutes an absolutely draconian command economy whereby first the money, then "moveables", and then the real estate of the Egyptian population come under the exclusive ownership of the Pharaonic regime. (All Egyptians were circumsized; all were reduced to some version of vassalage--while their offer to become actual slaves was not effected, there was a wholesale population transfer to diminish any feeling of land ownership.) Ostensibly, as I mentioned last week, this attempt to force equality on the entire population was intended to make life easier for Bnei Yisrael when these laws were to become applicable only to them. Alas.)
From the text, we can’t directly ascertain the Torah’s attitude toward this political system. In fact, it stands to reason that, in theory, the Torah might not find Yosef’s dictatorship particularly problematic, especially as it strongly favors monarchical governments, and furthermore, holds up unquestioning obeisance to a monarch as a paradigm of Avodas Hashem.
Moreover, there are other parshiyot that better lend themselves to discussions of whether Judaism favors a free market over a command economy (Behar and Bechukosai, especially) and the perils of social engineering (the story of Migdal Bavel in Noach).
I offer that, similar to what I said last week about taking advantage of ethno-political tensions for Jewish benefit, that sometimes what may not be the “best” solution may be the only solution. At the time of Yosef’s ascendance, the world was about to be plunged into its greatest economic and agricultural crisis. The Torah presents all of Yosef’s executive orders as specific responses to the increasing state of emergency.
Moreover, the fact that the Torah details how Yosef’s policy only became more incrementally draconian as the situation got worse, indicating that the socio-economic systems being implemented were far from the optimum.
My interpretation is that, on occasion, there might be something even less praiseworthy than exploiting socio-political tension. It’s the introduction of a “state of emergency” and its attendant decrees in cases where there may be none.
Anyone who has been the beneficiary of a Orthodox Torah education and is familiar with its interaction with the contemporary world at large is all too familiar with the incessant kol korei from pulpits and classrooms about the various spiritual state[s] of emergency that exist[s]. “Things have never been worse.” One wonders whether to apply Rambam’s dictum regarding the mitzvah d’oraisa of prayer applying only in crisis, but since everyday life is ipso facto a crisis, the mitzvah applies daily; or, whether one applies Reb Nachman Breslover’s adage that if you say “things can’t get any worse”, they do. (Murphy had nothing on Reb Nachman.) Alan Dershowitz’ "Tsures Theory of Jewish Survival”—that Judaism can only thrive in perpetual crisis, and that it finds itself in a worse crisis when there is less of a crisis, such as in contemporary Ameriocan society—further illustrates this dilemma.
I am not going to dispute the degree of crisis that does or does not exist ona hashkafic level. There is certainly enough of a crisis on a purely existential level (although whether that is actually any worse now than previously is also arguable). I will instead provide a few examples of why using a Crisis Hashkafa as an educational tool, if not a paradigm, can ultimately be destructive. One is Biblical, the other is more current.
The Gemara in Chelek relates how King Hezekiah instituted possibly the most compulsory system of education in Jewish, if not all recorded, history: he stuck a sword in the doorway of the beis medrash, saying “Anyone who doesn’t learn Torah will be run through with the sword.” The results, in his day, were immediately beneficial: everybody—including and especially children—knew halacha backwards and forwards. However, when his son Menashe ascended to the throne twelve years later, thirty-three years of the most widespread debauchery and bloodshed yet in Jewish history commenced. One can discern a correlation between the two when one remembers that Chizkiyahu’s policy was in response to an immediate and grave crisis: the imminent Assyrian invasion. Whether the policy was continued following Sancheriv’s defeat is not recorded; what is evident from the historical progression is that the continuation of a policy designed from crisis mode is unsustainable, and even its proper application can have unwanted effects later.
The second involves a speech I heard from prominent frum attorney Ban Brafman, famous for representing hip-hop artists and chareidim in legal difficulties. (I had to mention both; they both wear black hats.) He addressed the discomfiting phenomenon of very public criminal cases then pending against visibly fervently Orthodox Jews, some of whom he had been called to represent. Musing aloud at what their motivation might be, he offered that, in the “old country” where the authorities—both local and national—were usually openly anti-semitic, there existed a “sate of war” whereby a degree of subterfuge in dealings with the world outside the shtetl was condoned if not outright encouraged. Unfortunately, he offered, this attitude did not change when the setting changed, despite Rav Moshe Feinstein’s explicit characterization of the US as a “malchus shel chesed”. The very public chillulei Hashem that have resulted do not have be elaborated further, the secular media’s ostensible anti-chareidi bias notwithstanding.
To paraphrase Reb Nachman, if you keep saying it’s an emergency, then you’ll get an emergency.
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